Hi Sophia,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, stimulation, and hedonism.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were social, verbal, and analytic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get a job .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said finish my two papers .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said weight off my shoulders .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said procrastination .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When free time then write paper .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in job apps .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt disappointed when receiving critical feedback, and disappointed when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being job .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel emotional .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
![]()
Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Finding happiness in the pursuit rather than only from reaching the goal |
| Having more activities that fuel your energy than drain it |
| Effort counts twice! |
| goal fusion! merging lower level with superordinate goals to stay motivated |
| WOOP! use effective goal setting to bridge the intention action gap |
| Practice matters… when it's deliberate! |
| Advice is an example of forward thinking and feedback is relevant only for the past |
| learning from failure vs letting it impact you negatively (growth vs fixed). always thinking about whether your goal is performance or learning based |
| Changing your situation is most effective!!! |
| Critical feedback is suggestive that somebody believes in your potential |
| empathy makes you a better team player |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Emily Marks |
| Sophia always brought such amazing energy into Grit Lab. During every team discussion, Sophia always succeeded in keeping the conversation exciting and vibrant. In addition, Sophia demonstrated a great amount of curiosity throughout the semester. In every group discussion, she showed full interest in what others were sharing and always made a point to ask further questions.
For her discovery project, Sophia chose stand-up comedy. I was particularly impressed with how she approached her curiosity conversation. Rather than scheduling a phone call, Sophia sat down for a meal with the woman she was speaking with about stand-up. In addition, I admire how her curiosity conversation quickly turned into mentorship and extended beyond their scheduled conversation. Sophia’s curiosity conversation was one of many tasks that demonstrated how dedicated she was to the execution of this project. |
| Alex Fisher |
| Dear Sophia,
I loved spending this semester in OAX with you and in a class together,, I wanted to take a moment to express my genuine appreciation for the incredible impact you've had on our shared experiences. Your presence has been a guiding light, making our discussions, projects, and even the toughest coursework more enjoyable and meaningful. What strikes me most about you is your genuine and kind-hearted nature. You are one of the kindest people I have ever met and your smile and laugh light up a room. Your thoughtfulness and openness in our interactions create an environment that goes beyond the confines of our studies. It's clear that you bring not only intellect but also warmth to our academic community. The way you seamlessly balance being a dedicated learner with being an empathetic friend is truly admirable. I've noticed your ability to contribute deep insights while maintaining a down-to-earth levity in our discussions. Your personal touch adds a unique flavor to our shared experiences, making them more than just academic endeavors. I feel fortunate to have you as a classmate and friend. Your positivity, genuine spirit, and personal insights have made this academic year richer, and I'm looking forward to more moments of growth with you.
Your discovery project was absolutely awesome and I am so sorry that I could not have been there to see it in person. I am sure you made everyone in that room laugh their hearts out. I loved hearing about the mentor that you gained throughout the process. I loved how you decided to do standup out of a previous love for performing! I hope to see you in the comedy clubs one day and I genuinely can not wait to see the things you do in this world, I know they will be so impressive and absolutely amazing! - Alex
|
| Lily Martin |
| Sophia is one of the most bubbly and outgoing people I have met! I really appreciated how much energy she brought into our group. If I ever came into Grit Lab feeling low-energy, this would be turned around after our group check-ins. Sophia would always be the first person to start the conversation and ask everyone how their day was. I also noticed how thoughtful Sophia is. Whenever it seemed like someone in our group was being left out of the discussion, Sophia would be sure to ask them their thoughts. This thoughtfulness and infectious energy is what makes Sophia an incredible leader. Additionally, Sophia was not afraid to be vulnerable and share her personal experiences. I felt very lucky to have such a great person on my Grit Lab team!
For Sophia’s Discovery Project, she tried stand-up comedy. I really admired this Discovery Project choice. It takes a lot of courage to perform stand-up comedy, but Sophia was ready for the challenge! One thing that I learned from her presentation is that stand-up comedy is very intentional. Many people (myself included) tend to think that stand-up comedy performances consist of many individual jokes. However, Sophia described how there is a lot of planning required. You have to make sure that there is some sort of storyline across your jokes in order to create a cohesive performance. Another thing that I enjoyed about Sophia’s presentation was her discussion on her goal hierarchy. Sophia described how she faced many roadblocks (for example, not being able to perform at a comedy club until she’s 21) in her Discovery Project. She used this as an example of how it is important to have flexibility within your goal hierarchy. Lastly, I thought that Sophia did an excellent job delivering her presentation. She projected confidence and enthusiasm. I hope that I am able to watch one of Sophia’s stand-up performances in the future! |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.